Subject: Re: ...and even for those _NOT_ interested...
From: Erik Naggum <erik@naggum.net>
Date: Wed, 23 May 2001 21:14:59 GMT
Newsgroups: comp.lang.lisp
Message-ID: <3199641293497286@naggum.net>
* David Bakhash <cadet@alum.mit.edu>
> It's a free market out there for the Lisp guys. They can put whatever
> pricetag on their stuff, as far as I'm concerned.
If you really meant that, you would not have complained about their
prices, you would simply have worked to find or build cheaper solutions.
Since you do talk about the pricing, it looks very much like misdirected
bitterness. It is simply none of your businsees to argue about anybody
else's prices. If they are way too high, it is an excellent opportunity
to go in there and make a less expensive product. Of course, that would
be a lot easier if some of the competition had not given away their work
for free and some of it for too little, but maybe it will dawn on you
some day that the hardest thing in business is to charge the right price.
Also, inability to buy something you want is _not_ somebody's fault, not
even your own (think about it). You have complained bitterly about a
product you cannot purchase for a very long time, as if some _right_ of
yours has been abridged or violated. This provides a very strong signal
to those who could have provided tools to the Common Lisp community that
they should not do so, because they are looking at a customer base that
consists primarily of stingy people who do not want to pay (enough) for
Common Lisp products to keep the vendors alive. It is the attitudes that
you are professing that is killing the Common Lisp market. Because every
time you complain, the customer base shrinks a little, just like you told
us about your experience. This is _one_ reason never to discuss business
matters on the Internet. Another is that _any_ information you find on
business matters on the Net must be treated as completely unsubstantiated
and basically regarded as malicious rumors, but most people are oblivious
to the accountability of information they receive and regard any and all
sources of information as "equals".
> But that information will propogate so fast that they won't know what hit
> them.
Somebody has to put that information "out there" before it can propogate.
> If they screw someone over, they'll get it.
Some of us -- I begin to realize we are a shrinking minority -- still
appreciate the legal system for its ability to arbitrate conflicts such
that all parties are properly identified and heard, still want _fairness_
to have a fighting chance, and still appreciate the rational course of
acation in the face of disagreements to seek more information and to make
impartial conclusions. You, David Bakhash, are not in that minority.
The above one-liner is a strong signal to people who might do business
with you that they should be _very_ careful about the way they conduct
it. It is also a very strong signal to the community that if someone
_feels_ screwed, they will make sure that those who have the "gang up on
the alleged bad guy"-quality that was so cherished before civilization
happened will join in and beat up however made them feel bad for whatever
reason and cause.
> That's the beauty of open media, free press, and the Internet.
How do you correct mistakes once the information has propagated "so fast
the victom won't know what hit him"? How do you run after all the people
who are of the pre-civilized kind who just love to beat up people they
happen not to like for any numbers of reasons and shout "hey, wait, he's
not a bad guy after all"?
There are a lot of astonishingly unintelligent people out there who have
zero concern for people they have somehoe excluded from humanity, those
they do not want to empathize with. This neanderthal mentality that
people can be divided into "us" and "them" and you can do whatever you
want with "them" as long as you are one of "us" is so amazingly popular
in pre-civilized gangs of missing links, pre-humans, idiots and morons
who still roam the earth, some of them having figured out how to dress in
suits and ties, that it is damn nigh _impossible_ to stop a malicious
rumor. Those who have the intelligence and wherewithal to question them
(and of course not repeat them) encounter them repeatedly from the most
bizarre sources, frequently in contorted versions they recognize only
because they know what it was contorted from.
The "beauty" of giving everybody access to the microphone, is that you
have to _expect_ that what people say is nuts, but that is not how we
deal with people. We generally expect people to be rational and honest
and not go about destroying things maliciously, but some do. It is of
course an affront to everything human and decent to abuse public fora
with falsehoods of any magnitude, but also to spread "information" that
is hurtful to a party that cannot defend itself, that cannot be undone,
in a process that cannot even be _reversed_ if it turned out to be wrong
and unfair.
It annoys me tremendously that you are so selfish and destructive that
you completely fail to see the negative aspects of your own behavior,
David. The "beauty" of the free press is that we have libel laws to take
care of the destructive idiots. If it was such a "beauty", why would we
need such laws? Giving every person who wants to speak a voice is the
wrong choice. Democracy works when it is representative and guarantees
that procedures must be followed if anyone is to be punished or otherwise
have his rights taken away. We do not need Internet Lynch mobs, but when
it happens, it is the _furthest_ thing from "beauty" I can think of.
> I don't always agree with the individual outcomes, but on the whole
> forums such as this improve overall productivity.
Sure, this belief is why people have no concern for fairness. They have
some "higher goal" that think is serviced by their behavior. This is why
people _also_ object to anything they see as unfairness much more
severely than they would to fair treatment, and you, David Bakhash, are
grossly unfair to somebody you could simply stop mentioning and working
with. It was a mistake for _them_ to try to deal with _you_, but such
mistakes are hard to avoid when you run a business that has to be open to
all kinds of customers. _You_ are the real perpetrator here, David,
because you think it is morally defensible to be unfair to someone in
order to improve overall productivity.
> Vendors find out what developers need and care about, and that is a value
> they get. Well, I believe it goes beyond features, and so I'm
> comfortable writing about it.
The problem is that on the Internet, the saying is updated to read "once
burned, a billion times shy". People make mistakes all the time. The
important thing is to make it possible to correct them. If somebody do
not _want_ to correct them, I say flog them. If they want to, but are
not able to because people are prejudicial assholes who fail to update
their opinions when the facts they were once based on change, we have a
severe problem. This problem is exacerbated by the tendency of people
who are already prejudicial assholes to gang up on their victims.
Since you are so goddamn "comfortable" about writing about somebody you
happen not to like, even though they seem to have done a lot to try to
make you feel happier, why are you not comfortable about other people
telling the world about their encounters with you? What we see from you
here is grossly unfair. I would not deal with you if you gave me a
billion dollars to produce a Common Lisp environment, and sure as hell
would never in a lifetime hire you to work on a Common Lisp project.
> The last thing I ever want to hear is that a company got burned _because_
> they used Common Lisp.
That has never been the case. Not not, not in the past, and not in the
future. If you stick to this story, however, _you_ are the one who makes
it into an issue about Common Lisp and not the real issue, whatever it is
-- it could even _be_ overpricing, dwindling markets, uncertain future
for the Common Lisp environments because of that, or whatever, but this
is _not_ because they used Common Lisp.
Go play in another language if you cannot stop griping, David Bakhash.
You are doing the business community in the Common Lisp world a major,
major disservice when you think you do anything good with your incessant
griping. Just go do something better with your life and your money, will
you? Every one of us who still work to make Common Lisp a viable tool in
a changing world needs to make sure we survive while doing it. You are a
direct threat to that survival, because you are effectively antagonizing
the very concept of making money providing Common Lisp environments.
Not everybody are able to provide you with the goods you want at the
price you want. Just learn to live with it. The ability to buy whatever
you fancy is not a human right that is violated by charging more than you
can afford to pay. Leave those who charge more than you can afford alone
and pursue other goals. It is not like you do not have any options.
#:Erik
--
Travel is a meat thing.